The Obama administration’s experiments at controlling healthcare costs could take up to a year to produce results -- frustrating congressional lawmakers eager to know if new innovations in care delivery will actually work. Reuters reports.

Congress created the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation to test “innovative payment and service delivery models to reduce program expenditures… while preserving or enhancing the quality of care” for individuals who receive Medicare, Medicaid, or Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits.

Reform advocates see this as a path toward reining in healthcare cost growth for government programs and private-sector consumers across the $2.8 trillion U.S. healthcare industry.

But a growth of 7 percent is forecasted for next year… when healthcare costs have been growing at a historically low annual rate of around 4 percent over the last three years, heightening the prospect that government healthcare spending will accelerate as Congress focuses on ways to reduce the federal deficit.